Late last week, a five-year-old girl came home from Austin's Pease Elementary school with a question for her dad.

"Daddy," she asked her father, "Is Santa real?"

Dad said yes, and wanted to know why his daughter asked.

"Because Mrs. Fuller" -- the girl's afterschool teacher -- "said he wasn't real. She said 'None of you believe in Santa do you?' and said that you and mommy buy all our presents and put them under the tree. She said that you should tell us the truth."

The girl's mother said the whole family was taken off guard. Her daughter had previously attended a Waldorf school, where belief in fairies and other supernatural beings was nurtured.

Not so at her new school, where the teacher reportedly has a partner-in-grinchiness. The mother said another parent told her that a second teacher assigned her students to draw two pictures on a piece of paper, one of something real, and the other of something imaginary. When the student started drawing Santa on the "real" side of the page, the teacher said Saint Nick belonged on the fake side.

The mother says that spoiling Santa is most decidedly not the school's place.

"To break that harsh reality to them in such a brutal way is just wrong," the mom says. "Especially since these kids are five. She is just really getting into Santa."

The mom emailed a complaint to the principal, who told he that she has reprimanded the teacher and given her the "tools to deal with this situation" in the future. The mom says that the principal was "horrified" by what the teachers had done.

So, what are your opinions on this? Do you think the teacher was in the wrong by infringing upon her students' family beliefs and traditions, or in the right by dispelling fairy tales that are dispelled with age anyway? Would you be mad if you were the parent? Were her actions acceptable or unacceptable?

Don't see anything really wrong here, it's a bit of a dick move but most kids will have worked out Santa isn't real by the time they're seven or so so it doesn't really matter. I'm more concerned with the fact that a journalist, and the parents, thought this was something that was worth his/her time and effort. Kind of proves how petty people can be.

Well out of order. The whole Santa thing made Christmas so exciting as a child. Putting out milk and cookies for Santa, and carrot for his reindeer, it made Christmas that bit more special. My brother's 10 years younger than me, and seeing him get so excited about Santa was amazing. No child should have that ripped from them in such a way.